How do you conduct a pipeline review?

Required tools

• Updated pipeline — The review is only as good as the data.
• A dashboard everyone previews — Don't use meeting time to present figures.

Prepare

1. 1.Share the figures before the meeting

   Everyone should have reviewed the pipeline beforehand. The meeting time is for agreements that require a decision, not for going over what everyone could have read.

2. 2.Select the agreements in advance

   Take ten minutes to identify the five to ten that matter most or are stalled. Don’t go through everything—you won’t have time to get anything done.

Complete

1. 3.Run the meeting in the system

   Not in a spreadsheet created for the occasion. If you do that, you have told the organization that the CRM is not the source of truth—and data quality will suffer accordingly.

2. 4.Ask about the next step, not the status

   “What happens next, and when?” drives progress. “How’s it going?” provides an update. The difference determines whether the meeting is worth the hour.

3. 5.Update during the meeting

   If a closing date or an assessment changes, enter the change immediately. Changes scheduled to be made later will not be implemented.

4. 6.Conclude by deciding who does what

   Every agreement you discussed should have a next step, with a person responsible and a date. Without that, the meeting was just a conversation.